Smart Speakers Capture 30% of Audio Market, VPAs Poised to Create New ‘Wild Frontier’

Market research and consulting company, Futuresource Consulting recently released a new report in the consumer electronics CE space covering the emerging voice personal assistants (VPAs) category and smart speakers. The report highlights that we are the beginning of a wider market transformation, with voice personal assistants (VPAs) at the heart of a new CE land grab.

The audio industry was once again shaken to its foundations by Apple's announcements at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017. The product updates and sneak peeks made at this Apple Special Event, on June 5, 2017, were extremely rich in surprising technology revelations, even though its implications might not become clear until a few weeks or months later. After all, the WWDC conference - a developer's conference - is traditionally where Apple builds the foundations for what will be its underlying short-term/long-term strategies, serving mainly to motivate developers and strategic partners.

Like every year at this time, the world of telecom and mobile descends upon cosmopolitan Barcelona for another edition of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) promoted by the GSM Association (GSMA). As we have noted before, MWC is becoming a larger forum for cutting-edge audio technologies than other industry events: anything that's wireless audio, wearables, and IoT, and even small dedicated audio technology providers have taken notice and are attending in full force.